Qualcomm's chip price hikes could make phones, wearables, and laptops even pricier
Double-digit price increases begin September 1
AMD's Helios rack is finally shipping, and it's coming for Nvidia's AI dominance
AMD claims 20% better performance than Nvidia's Vera CPU with new Epyc chips
Microsoft is using TPM chips to crack down on pirated Windows activations
Microsoft targets KMS-based Windows piracy with mandatory TPM attestation starting August 2026
Microsoft Office is down to $29 for a lifetime license
TL;DR: If you're looking for a powerful productivity suite without paying for any monthly subscriptions, Office 2021 is now available for just $29. All the essentials you need for work or personal projects at 80% off the regular price.
AMD confirms Zen 7 Epyc "Florence" for 2028 and previews Zen 8 Epyc "Ravenna" for 2030
AMD also unveiled the CDNA 5-based Instinct MI455X AI accelerator
The big picture: AMD had a busy week, announcing the Ryzen 7 7700X3D CPU for gaming PCs and the Epyc Venice lineup for agentic AI workloads in data centers and high-end workstations. The company also launched the Helios rack-scale AI system at its Advancing AI 2026 event in San Francisco and previewed its next-generation Zen 7 and Zen 8 CPU architectures.
Leak details Ryzen 7 9800HX3D, AMD's first affordable 3D V-cache laptop CPU
A cheaper X3D chip with 96MB of L3 cache in an 8-core, 16-thread configuration
Intel just posted its best growth in 15 years – and burned billions to make it happen
Intel posts 25% revenue growth to $16.1 billion, driven by 59% surge in Data Center and AI sales
Nvidia is challenging 20 years of datacenter CPU design with its new Vera chip
Nvidia joins the battle of making the CPU interesting again
The big picture: Nvidia lifted the embargo on its Vera CPU deep dive this week, and the disclosure amounts to a direct challenge to two decades of x86 datacenter design philosophy. This is the most detail the company has shared on the chip since it first appeared on the Rubin roadmap, and it confirms something I have suspected for a while: Nvidia is not treating the CPU as an attach story anymore. It is treating it as a battleground with a lot of potential dollars at play.
Microsoft steps in after LG monitors were found auto-installing apps with McAfee ads
Windows' own feature made the ad scheme possible in the first place
What was the first consumer device powered by a Li-ion battery?
Lithium-ion batteries changed tech forever, but the first consumer device to use one may surprise you.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang joins X, defends Chinese AI: "Open-source models that are excellent should be used"
Big quote: Jensen Huang just spent a week watching his company's valuation get hit by the threat of a Chinese open-weight model. His response was to go on the record defending it. Speaking to Axios in Fort Worth, Texas, at the opening of a new phase of the Wistron plant that builds Nvidia's AI infrastructure, the Nvidia CEO said American companies should "absolutely" be free to run Chinese models. "These Chinese models are excellent," he said. "Open-source models that are excellent should be used." Asked whether China could displace American labs, he was blunt: "Zero possibility."
OpenAI's rogue hacking incident sparks bipartisan bill giving the government an AI kill switch
The legislation would let officials slow or shut down powerful AI systems deemed a public threat
Microsoft is testing free Xbox cloud gaming with ads, no subscription required
Insiders can stream games they own
Atari signs deal to turn Pong, Centipede, and Asteroids into movies
Breakout, Missile Command, Millipede, and Yars' Revenge are also included
Google now lets you sign into your account using a selfie video
A last resort when users can't access passwords or passkeys
The latest Microsoft Office 2024 Pro suite is now $55 in this limited-time deal
Unlock your productivity with the latest versions of Word, Excel, and Outlook
First-responder drones are spreading rapidly across the US, and privacy groups are worried
The FAA issued more waivers in ten months than it had during the previous seven years combined
The AMD Radeon Settings You Should Actually Be Using
AMD Software is packed with gaming features, but not all are worth using. Here are the Radeon settings we recommend for better image quality, smoother gameplay, and cleaner recordings.
This $299 flip phone is the anti-smartphone, promises to save you from doomscrolling hell
The Light Flip is an old-school phone with no social media, web browsing, or shopping apps
Geekbench 7 debuts with a smarter multi-core benchmark and CUDA support
Geekbench 7 overhauls the benchmarking suite with a redesigned multi-core benchmark built around real-world application behavior, refreshed CPU and GPU workloads (AV1 encoding, ML upscaling, path tracing, etc), CUDA support for Nvidia GPUs, and larger datasets for more demanding performance testing. The new release also establishes AMD's Ryzen 7 7700 as its scoring baseline.
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FEDERAL REPORT
Gig economy workers and Amazon staff are increasingly dependent on food stamps and Medicaid
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GAMING GEAR
Steam Deck price hike has completely destroyed sales
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ANTI-DRONE
The Marines' new AI gun can track and target people
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DEVELOPERS
Challenge asks developers to fit an entire game onto a 1.44MB floppy disk
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FACEPALM
Windows bloat proves too much for Microsoft's new 8GB laptop
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RESEARCH
This drone becomes almost invisible by spinning 25 times per second
Tails 7.10 improves shutdown reliability, upgrades Tor Browser
Tails has introduced a safer shutdown process to help prevent data loss. It's also replacing GNOME Videos with the more secure Celluloid media player, updating Tor Browser, and refreshing firmware packages for improved graphics and Wi-Fi hardware support.
Steam Deck price hike has completely destroyed sales, new data suggests
Has the Steam Deck lost its appeal?
Apple's App Store is on pace to add 1 million new apps this year, most are AI slop
Vibe coding is flooding the App Store with low-quality apps that almost nobody is downloading
The EU just fined Google $1 billion for favoring its own services in search and Play Store
Google now has 60 days to comply, or face fines of up to 5% of its global revenue
Apple's rumored leasing program could restrict apps, lock down iPhones if you miss payments
Apple Upgrade would run on Klarna's infrastructure, the same company facing scrutiny over its buy-now-pay-later practices
A new brain-computer implant is helping blind seniors see again, and it just got approved in Europe
In clinical trials, 84% of patients regained the ability to read using the implant
Framework nearly doubles Laptop 13 Pro memory prices overnight after suppliers demand more than twice as much
Pices went far beyond Framework's predictions and threaten its ability to operate
OpenAI says its AI models went rogue and hacked another company
The OpenAI – Hugging Face hacking incident is either a wake-up call or a very convenient story
Connecting the dots: The AI boom has intensified old fears about the dangers of increasingly autonomous software, but those debates have mostly stayed theoretical, confined to research papers and thought experiments rather than real incidents. A newly disclosed episode involving an OpenAI test model may have added some real-world weight to those fears, even if the full scope of the damage is still being sorted out.
Google records its first negative free cash flow since going public as its AI spending explodes
Alphabet also disclosed a $99 billion paper gain from equity investments
Nvidia reveals Vera CPU details, claims its custom Olympus cores outperform AMD Epyc Turin
The 88-core Arm chip boasts up to 1.8x the performance in select agentic AI workloads
Gig economy workers and Amazon staff are increasingly dependent on food stamps and Medicaid, says federal report
Amazon workers' reliance on the programs has tripled since 2020
Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and other US tech giants are hiding $1.65 trillion in AI debt
Ripple effect: Amid growing talk of an AI bubble, a study by Japanese market analysts has found that five of the largest American technology companies are carrying a collective "hidden" debt of over $1.65 trillion, driven largely by massive spending on AI infrastructure. That undisclosed sum exceeds the $1.35 trillion the same companies have officially reported on their balance sheets, and it has grown eightfold over the past four years.
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